In the classroom, what we’re aiming for is that students’ mental health and wellbeing are cared for, so that they feel good about being there and want to do their best. This in turn should positively affect our own wellbeing and mental health as teachers. To do this, we want to look for good rather […]
I have concluded that there is almost no activity which doesn’t teach me something about teaching. Freed from some of the rigorous constraints on my time by leaving a school environment, I’ve taken to a daily gym session to force me out of bed, refresh my mind and body and ready me for the challenges […]
If you have to share a classroom with 30 young people, it’s an awful lot easier to get things done if there is an understanding between you, a tacit contract that you will treat one another with respect, that the students will let the teacher teach, and the teacher will help the students learn. […]
It’s early 2018 as I write, and a very tough time to be a child. It’s not that easy for the rest of us, but it doesn’t take much of a stretch of imagination to see that it must be unbelievably scary and confusing through the lens of a child. We have lived through a […]
You can decide to like a class. We’ve all been there – that knot in the stomach when you have to face 8S again. The faces which swim into your head, those of the students who need somehow to be ‘managed’, to be cajoled into compliance or manoeuvred quickly through the sanction escalation ladder […]
Parents and carers read, listen to, are aware of news. They know that schools are presiding over a rising muddy tide of mental health problems caused by multiple factors. They know that also one of those factors is the relentless (does that word still appear in the OfStEd success criteria?) drive to push students up […]
Fear is of no avail in education…
